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Mr Borzini, who himself was shaped like a peanut, lumbered out from the back storage room. “Hiya, Rosie!” he said with a grin. Then he saw the macadamia nuts on the floor and his grin disappeared. “Hello, Sage.”
“We need a pound of poppy seeds,” said Rose with a smile.
“Prrrronto!” Sage said, rolling the r like an Italian and kissing his fingers. Mr Borzini’s frown melted away and he laughed.
Mr Borzini smiled at Rose as he handed over the seeds. “You sure have got a funny brother, Rosie!”
Rose smiled back, wishing that someone thought she was as funny as Sage. She was quietly sarcastic, but that wasn’t the same thing. She wasn’t gorgeous, like Ty. She was too old to be adorable, like Leigh. She was good at baking, which mostly meant that she was meticulous and good at maths. But no one ever smiled at her and said, “Wow! How meticulous and good at maths you are, Rose!”
And so Rose had come to think of herself as merely ordinary, like a person walking silently in the background of a movie set. Oh well.
Rose thanked Mr Borzini and loaded the unwieldy Hessian sack into the metal basket on the front of her bike. Then she dragged her brother outside, and the two of them took off.
“I don’t understand why we have to go and get all this stuff,” Sage grumbled as they worked their way up a hill. “If Leigh spilled it, then she should have to go and get it.”
“Sage. She’s three.”
“I don’t understand why we have to work in the stupid bakery anyway. If our parents can’t run the bakery by themselves, then they shouldn’t have started one in the first place.”
“You know they have to bake – it’s in their blood,” Rose replied, taking a breath. “Plus, this town would collapse without them. Everyone needs our cakes and pies and muffins, just to keep going. We are running a public service.”
As much as she rolled her eyes, Rose secretly loved to help. She loved the way her mother sighed with relief whenever Rose returned with all the right ingredients, loved the way her father hugged her after she’d made a shortbread dough just crumbly enough, loved the way the townspeople hummed with happiness after taking the first warm, flaky bite of a chocolate croissant. And she loved how the mixture of ingredients – some normal, some not so normal – not only made people happy, but sometimes did much more than that.
“Well, I want a copy of the Calamity Falls child-labour codes because I’m pretty sure what they do to us is illegal.”
Rose slowed and clamped her nose as Sage rode past. “So is the way you smell.”
Sage gasped. “I do not smell!” he said, but then lifted his arms in the air to double-check. “OK, maybe a little bit!”
2. Florence the Florist. A dozen poppies
Rose and Sage found Florence the florist asleep in a comfy chair in a corner. Everyone speculated about her exact age, but the consensus in Calamity Falls was that she couldn’t be younger than ninety.
Her store looked more like a living room than a floral shop – yellow sunlight splashed through the shutters on to a little sofa, and a fat tabby cat lay splayed out near a dusty fireplace. A collection of vases near the window were filled with every conceivable kind of flower, and a dozen baskets hung from the ceiling with leafy green vines spilling out of them.
Rose brushed a curtain of ivy away from her face and cleared her throat.
Florence slowly opened her eyes. “Who is that?”
“It’s Rosemary Bliss,” Rose said.
“Oh, I see.” Florence grumbled as if she were annoyed at the prospect of having a customer. “What… can… I… get for you?” she asked, rising and panting as she shuffled towards the vases below the window.
“A dozen poppies, please,” Rose said.
Florence groaned as she bent to collect the papery red flowers. She perked up, though, as she looked over at Sage. “Is that you, Ty? You’re looking… shorter.”
Sage laughed, flattered to be mistaken for his older brother. “Oh no,” he said. “I’m Sage. Everyone says we look a lot alike.”
Florence grumbled for the second time. “I’ll sure miss seeing that heartthrob Ty around when he goes off to college.”
Everyone always wondered what her dashingly handsome brother would do when he was finally old enough to leave Calamity Falls. As much as he seemed destined to leave, Rose herself seemed destined to stay behind. She wondered whether, if she remained in Calamity Falls, she’d end up like Florence the florist – with nothing to do but sleep in a chair in the middle of the day, waiting for something strange and exciting to happen, knowing that it never would.
But leaving town would mean leaving the bakery. And then she would never get to know where her mother stored all those magical blue mason jars. She’d never learn how to mix a bit of northern wind into icing so that it would thaw the frozen heart of a loveless person. She’d never figure out how to fine-tune the reaction among frog’s eyes, molten magma and baking soda – which, her mother had told her, could mend broken bones almost immediately.
“And what about you, Rosemary?” Florence said as she wrapped the poppies in brown paper. “Anything exciting happening? Any boys?”
“I’m too busy babysitting Sage,” Rose said a little too forcefully.
It was true that she didn’t have any time to go on dates with boys, but even if she did, she probably wouldn’t anyway. A date seemed strange and a little unappealing, like sushi. She would like very much to stand with Devin Stetson at the top of Sparrow Hill and look down at the expanse of Calamity Falls, the autumn wind blowing through their hair, rustling the leaves. But that wasn’t a date.
Still, he was the reason she’d taken a shower before she left this morning, combed the knots out of her shoulder-length black hair, and put on her favourite pair of jeans and a blue shirt with just the right amount of lace (very little). She knew she wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t stunning, either. Rose was sure that if there was any greatness in her at all, it lurked somewhere inside her and not on her face.
Her mother seemed to agree. “You’re not like other girls,” she’d once said. “You’re so good at maths!”
As Rose wondered why she couldn’t be both – the kind of girl who was good at maths and pretty – she and Sage left the shop, poppies in hand.
3. Poplar’s Open-air Market. 2 lbs pippin apples
A short burst of ferocious pedalling carried them over the train tracks to Poplar’s Open-air Market, which was so crowded in the early morning that the lanes between the rows of fruit and vegetable stands were like a parkway during a traffic jam.
“I need apples!” yelled Rose, waving one hand in the air.
“Aisle three!” a man yelled from behind a table stacked higher than his head with peaches.
Sage stopped the flow of traffic by picking up two giant butternut squashes and lifting them like dumb-bells.
“Why are you doing that?”
“I’m getting strong – like Ty,” he puffed, his face turning beetroot red. “Ty and I are going to be pro athletes. There’s no way I’m going to stay here and bake for the rest of my life.”
Rose grabbed the butternut squashes from Sage’s outstretched arms and put them back where they belonged. “But we help people,” Rose whispered to Sage. “We’re like good baker wizards.”
“If we’re wizards, then where are our wands and our owls and magic hats? And where is our arch-nemesis?” Sage said. “Face it, Sis – we’re just bakers. While you’re stuck here making cakes, me and Ty will be modelling sneakers in France.”
Sage pedalled off and Rose was left holding the apples, her arms trembling under the weight.
4. Mr Kline’s Key Shop. You know what to do.
In a rusty shack on the outskirts of town, Rose handed Mr Kline the delicate whisk-shaped key. He examined it through glasses as thick as English muffins.
The key shop was windowless, and everything in it was covered in a fine layer of grey dust, like Mr Kline had just come back from a very long vacation. Rose breathed in through her mouth. The air tasted like metal.
“This’ll take me at least an hour,” he said. “You’ll have to come back.”
Sage let out a ridiculously loud groan, but Rose was happy. Kline’s just happened to sit at the base of Sparrow Hill, and Stetson’s just happened to sit at the top.
“Hey, buddy,” she said. “Let’s walk up Sparrow Hill.”
“No way!” Sage said. “That hill is way too high and it’s way too hot. I’m gonna see if they have any new jelly bean flavours at Calamity Confections.”
“Come on,” said Rose, catching him by the shoulder. “It’ll be nice. We can stand on the fence at the lookout point and find our house. And I’ll buy you a doughnut.”
“Fine. But,” he said, raising one finger high above his head, “I get to pick the doughnut!”
5. Stetson’s Doughnuts and Automotive Repair
Rose was panting by the time they reached the top of the hill. Stetson’s was an unimpressive concrete hut adorned with the parts of old cars. Pansies grew out of tyres on the ground, and a DOUGHNUTS sign hung from an old fender fixed above the doorframe.
Rose trembled as she scooped her black hair, now goopy with sweat, away from her forehead. She was the kind of girl who was unafraid of spiders, dirt bikes, or burning her fingers in a hot oven – and she’d had plenty of encounters with each. But walking into the same room as a boy she liked? Now that was frightening.
Just as she gathered the courage to walk down the drive and enter the store, Devin Stetson breezed by on his moped, blond fringe flapping in the wind, and sped down the hill. Apparently his father had given him the morning off.
Rose’s stomach turned. It was the same sensation as when you fly higher than you should on a swing and you can feel your stomach a beat behind, flopping around inside you like a fish on the deck of a boat.
As she watched him go, she could swear he turned for a second and glanced back at her.
Sage had already ambled up to the lookout point and climbed to the second rail of the fence. “Whoa. Rose. Look.”
Rose shook herself and jogged over to see what Sage was talking about: a caravan of police cars was driving along the winding road that cut through town. Calamity Falls looked like a painting from the top of Sparrow Hill, and the cars looked like a blue and white knife slashing through it.
“Where are they going?” asked Sage, uncharacteristically quiet.
“Oh boy,” Rose said, squinting. “I think they’re going to the bakery.”
“MAYBE TY WAS arrested,” said Rose.
She and Sage threw their bikes down in the Bliss bakery backyard and ran towards the back door. Three police cruisers formed a fence outside the house, and a white Hummer with tinted windows squatted in the driveway like a fat pit bull.
Through the open driver’s-side window of the Hummer, Rose and Sage could see a man wearing a crisp police uniform and sunglasses. He was speaking into a walkie-talkie. “They’re still in there,” he was saying. “I know them – they won’t come out empty-handed.”
Rose stepped on a breeze block and peered through the open shutters of one of the kitchen windows. Her parents were standing on one side of the great wooden chopping block that Purdy rolled around like a shopping cart. A woman in a stern navy trouser suit stood on the other side. Purdy and Albert looked at each other nervously while Purdy kept a hand on the Bliss Cookery Booke, which sat closed on the chopping block. When the book was open, it looked like a fat white bird spreading its wings; closed, it looked vulnerable, like a little loaf of brown bread.
This is it,Rose thought. Someone has come for the book.
Every Tuesday evening, Albert and Purdy went to two-for-one night at the Calamity Falls Movie Theatre and left their neighbour Mrs Carlson in charge. As Albert left, he’d always say, “Don’t let anyone in! It might be the government coming to steal our recipes!”
The kids always laughed, but Rose knew that her father wasn’t really joking. She’d glimpsed pages in the book with medieval drawings of storms, fire, a wall of thorns, a man bleeding – recipes you wouldn’t want to fall into the hands of someone who might actually use them.
Sage climbed up on the breeze block, but couldn’t see through the window. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“They’re going to take the cookbook,” she said, struggling to push the words past a massive lump in her throat. She looked in at the strange cast-iron stove that sat like a dark beehive against one wall of the kitchen, at the row of glistening cherrywood cabinets that lined the other, at the tangle of racks and metal hooks that hung in a cluster from the centre of the ceiling and held at their ends every conceivable size of metal spatula and spoon, at the giant silver stand mixer that sat in the back corner, with a bowl so big that Leigh could (and sometimes did) climb inside, and a twirling dough hook the size of a rowing boat’s oar. She stared at everything her parents had built, shabby as it was, and stifled a sob.
She imagined her parents locked in a dirty jail cell, her brothers begging on the streets, the country ruled by a mob of tyrannical bakers who used muffins and pies as their weapons of mass destruction.
“I’ll stop them,” Sage muttered, and rushed around to the back door. He threw it open and shouted, “My parents didn’t do anything!”
Albert and Purdy spun round inside the kitchen and tried to shush Sage, but it was too late. The woman in the navy trouser suit stared out of the back door and motioned for Sage and Rose to come inside.
“My name is Janice ‘The Hammer’ Hammer,” she said. “I’m the mayor of Humbleton.” She flashed a strained smile, and Rose realised that though this wasn’t the friendliest woman she’d ever met, she wasn’t there to steal their book, either.
“Why are the police here?” said Rose.
“Those are cars that I had painted to look like police cars so that I’d look more intimidating whenever I went on a trip. The men inside are my colleagues on the Humbleton Board of Trustees. One is a florist, one is a lawyer and the third is a plumber who fills in when he doesn’t have any toilets to unclog.”
“Isn’t it illegal to dress up like a police officer?” Sage prodded.
Mayor Hammer just glared at him. “I came to ask your parents for help in fighting a summer flu in Humbleton. I’ve never seen one this bad – it’s like a plague. Rubbish bins overflowing with Kleenex. Doctors totally out of cough drops. The ear, nose and throat guy fleeing in terror to his condo in Florida. Wimp.”
Albert and Purdy laughed nervously.
“Anyway, I didn’t know what to do. But then I remembered your parents’ almond croissants – people swear they make fevers and runny noses just disappear. So I’ve come to beg for forty dozen.”
Mayor Hammer turned back to Albert and Purdy. “I know it’s short notice, but I’ve run out of options.”
Purdy wrung her hands. “We-we’d love to help,” she stammered, “but this kitchen really doesn’t have the capacity to make forty dozen croissants. We’re just a family bakery.”
“Come to Humbleton, then!” blurted out Mayor Hammer. “You could feed an army out of the kitchen at Town Hall. You’ll make your almond croissants there. And then you’ll make pumpkin cheesecake.”
“Pumpkin cheesecake?” asked Albert, his forehead wrinkling.
Mayor Hammer reached into her black leather briefcase and pulled out a yellowed newspaper clipping from the Calamity Falls Gazette. The headline read, “Ten-Year-Old Boy with Swine Flu Eats Bliss Pumpkin Cheesecake, Miraculously Cured.”
Albert wiped his hands on his apron. “Ha! Wouldn’t that be something? That was just a tall tale, though. The kid was just faking so he could skip school.”
Her parents never admitted to anyone but their children that Bliss baked goods had magic in them. “If word gets out about the magic,” Purdy always said, “then everyone will want it, and our little bakery won’t be our little bakery any more. It will become a giant factory. Everything would be ruined.”
If anyone noticed the sometimes miraculous effects of the cookies, the cakes, the pies, Albert and Purdy would shrug it off, insisting that these were the standard benefits of a perfect recipe, well prepared.
Rose, though, could still remember when that cheesecake had been made. She’d been watching from the stairs, observing how her parents had sifted the ingredients from a few different mason jars together one night after the bakery was closed, how a purple mist had risen from the bowl and swirled around her mother’s head, how the mixture had sizzled and popped, shooting off sparks of pink and green and canary yellow.
What she wouldn’t give to bake like that! It was a kind of baking that commanded respect, even if the whole thing was kept a secret.
Mayor Hammer tapped her foot impatiently. “I don’t care whether the cheesecake actually cures people or not – people love it, it makes them feel better, and that’s what we need.”
Purdy made her voice soft and sweet as a chocolate chip cookie. “Well… how long do you need us?”
“No more than a week,” said the mayor.
Albert shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mayor Hammer. We’ve been open for twenty-five years, and we’ve never closed the bakery for more than a single day. There’s just no way we can leave for an entire week.”
Mayor Hammer nodded to one of her bodyguards, who produced a leather-bound cheque book. She scribbled some numbers on a cheque and showed it to Albert and Purdy, who looked at each other in shock, like someone had just pulled a rabbit out of a hat – a very expensive, diamond-encrusted rabbit.
Albert gasped. “So many zeros.”
Purdy looked at Mayor Hammer with embarrassment. “We’ll do it—”
“Oh, wonderful!” said Mayor Hammer, handing Purdy the cheque.
